Defining the Americans

We yell for the Government to balance the budget, then take the last dime we have to make the down payment on a car. We whip the enemy in battle, then give them the shirt off our backs. We yell for speed laws that will stop fast driving, then won't buy a car if it can't go over 100 miles an hour. Americans get scared to death if we vote a billion dollars for education, then are unconcerned when we find out we are spending three billion dollars a year for cigarettes. We know the line-up of every baseball team in the American and National Leagues but don't know half the words in the "Star Spangled Banner". We'll spend half a day looking for vitamin pills to make us live longer, then drive 90 miles an hour on slick pavement to make up for lost time. We tie up our dog while letting our sixteen year old son run wild. We will work hard on a farm so we can move into town where we can make more money so we can move back to the farm. In the office we talk about baseball, shopping or fishing, but when we are out at the game, the mall or on the lake, we talk about business. We are the only people in the world who will pay $.50 to park our car while eating a $.25 sandwhich. We're the country that has more food to eat than any other country in the world and more diets to keep us from eating it. We run from morning to night trying to keep our earning power up with our yearning power. We're supposed to be the most civilized Christian nation on earth, but we still can't deliver payrolls without an armored car. We have more experts on marriage than any other country in the world and still have more divorces.

Ball Point Pen

When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ball-point pens would not work in zero gravity.
To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion developing a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300° C.

The Russians use a pencil.

Japan's Quality Standard

This speaks a lot about the Japanese quality standards and also cultural misunderstandings. They're still laughing about this at IBM. Apparently the computer giant decided to have some parts manufactured in Japan as a trial project. In the specifications, they set out that they will accept three defective parts per 10,000. When the delivery came in there was an accompanying letter. "We, Japanese people, had a hard time understanding North American business practices. But the three defective parts per 10,000 have been separately manufactured and have been included in the consignment. Hope this pleases you."